The most reckless waste of aquatic life I remember to have seen noticed, if we except the destruction of herring and other fish with upawn, is that of the eggs of the turtle in the Amazon for the sake of the oil extracted from then. Bates estimates the eggs thus annually sacrificed at 48,000,000.-Naturalits inthe Amazon, 2d edition, 1864, p. 805.] Fish are more affected than quadrupeds by slight and even imperceptible differences in their breeding places and feeding grounds. Every river, every brook, every lake stamps a special character upon its salmon, its shad, and its trout, which is at once recognized by those who deal in or consume them. No skill can give the fish fattened by food selected and prepared by man the flavor of those which are nourished at the table of nature, and the trout of the artificial pouds in Germany and Switzerland are so inferior to the brook-fish of the same species and climate, that it is hard to believe them identical. The superior sapidity of the American trout and other fresh-water fishes to the most nearly corresponding European species, which is familiar to every one acquainted with both continents, is probably due less to specific difference than to the fact that, even in the parts of the New World which have been longest cultivated, wild nature is not yet tamed down to the character it has assumed in the Old, and which it will acquire in America also when her civilization shall be as ancient as is now that of Europe. [Footnote: It is possible that time may modify the habits of the fresh-water fish the North American States, and accommodate them to the new physical conditions of their native waters. Hence it may be hoped that nature, even unaided by art, will do something towards restoring the ancient plenty of our lakes and rivers. The decrease of our fresh-water fish cannot be alone to exhaustion by fishing, for in the waters of the valleys and flanks of the Alps, which have been inhabited and fished ten times as long by a denser population, fish are still very abundant, and they thrive and multiply under circumstances where no American species could live at all. On the southern slope of those mountains, trout are caught in great numbers, in the swift streams which rush from the glaciers, and where the water is of icy coldness, and so turbid with particles of fine-ground rock, that you cannot see an inch below the surface. The glacier streams of Switzerland, however, are less abundant in fish.]